PR Archives:  LatestBy Company By Date


Press Release -- October 7th, 2015
Source: Akamai
Tags:

Jet2.Com And Jet2holidays Accelerate Business Growth And Improve Customer Experience With Akamai

London, UK | October 07, 2015

Akamai Web Performance solutions help leading leisure airline and package holiday specialist take-off through enhanced online service and secure website capacity

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKAM, news, filings), the global leader in content delivery network (CDN) services, today announced that Jet2.com, one of the UK’s leading leisure airlines and Jet2holidays, the award winning package holiday specialist, are experiencing massive performance benefits and improved customer feedback through the use of Akamai Web Performance Solutions. The two businesses, which are part of the Dart Group, have recently upgraded to the next generation delivery platform, Akamai Ion, allowing them to maximize content delivery across different devices, and in particular match the growing trend for customers to interact using mobiles.

Jet2.com’s and Jet2holidays’ decision to deploy Ion follows a period of rapid growth during which customer numbers have increased significantly. The implementation of Akamai Web Performance Solutions in 2012 was pivotal to their expansion, allowing both brands to offload the vast majority of end user requests away from their origin infrastructure instead of investing in an expensive and time consuming data centre upgrade.

Allan Crisp, IT Business Systems Manager at Jet2.com and Jet2holidays, said: “The main issue for us was to be able to support the fast expansion of our online business. We regularly run TV advertising that generates big traffic peaks which were becoming very challenging for our existing infrastructure to deal with. We knew that the number of online visitors would continue to increase so we had to consider how we could gain the bandwidth and server support we needed without investing in new equipment. In particular, judging by traffic trends, we anticipated that we would have to invest in larger network connections into our data centres which would have been a huge financial consideration. Moving onto the Akamai platform enabled us to gain that capacity; it’s fully scalable and it simplifies maintenance.”

Akamai’s Web Performance solutions, including Ion, are designed to optimize websites for maximum performance, offload, and deliver an optimal user experience. Jet2.com and Jet2holidays have benefited from up to five times the speed of their origin web infrastructure, while delivering personalised engaging content to their customers.

Jet2.com, offers low-fare flights to 65 destinations from seven UK bases, including its HQ at Leeds Bradford Airport. Sister company, Jet2holidays, is the third largest holiday operator in the UK. Over the last three years the websites for both companies have continued to drive increasing traffic volumes with continued increases in visitors forecast in the coming years. The Jet2holidayssite has also been enhanced with dynamic content which is fully supported by the Akamai platform.

It was recognized by Jet2.com and Jet2holidays that this exponential growth would also have security implications and in the last 14 months both sites have been using Akamai’s Kona Web Application Firewall, providing defence against security attacks and giving them visibility of malicious traffic.

“It is reassuring to be able to see that Akamai is picking up attacks and batting them off before they can have any impact on us,” continued Allan Crisp. “In fact, we are very well supported by Akamai across the board. We are currently offloading upwards of 50% of traffic from Jet2.comand 75% from Jet2holidays and customer feedback in relation to performance has been positive. We have been very happy with the way that the Akamai platform performs, particularly the way it can scale when we are hitting our highest peaks. With significant growth forecast for the next few years, the renewal of our agreement will allow us to continue this growth with Akamai’s support.”

Alex Keith, UK & Ireland Regional Sales Manager at Akamai added: “Jet2.com and Jet2holidaysare highly valued customers and we are delighted that our agreement will continue for another three years. The investment required to keep up with online demands is always challenging for fast growing organisations like Jet2.com and Jet2holidays. The combination of optimisation and acceleration technologies that we can offer as part of the Akamai Web Performance solution will enable them to continue to grow and deliver dynamic, content-rich and responsive experiences to their customers.”

About Akamai

As the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. The company’s advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere. To learn how Akamai solutions and its team of Internet experts are helping businesses move faster forward, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

About Jet2.com

  1. Jet2.com is a leading leisure airline providing friendly low fares to more than 50 exciting sun, city and ski destinations across Europe. It operates from seven UK airports: Belfast International, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds Bradford, Manchester and Newcastle.
  2. Jet2.com prides itself on offering award winning customer service, the best flight times in the business, allocated seating and a generous 22kg baggage allowance.
  3. Jet2.com is one of the largest airlines in the UK with a fleet of 61 aircraft.
  4. Jet2.com has scooped a host of prestigious awards, with the most recent ones including: Best Short Haul Airline at the Globe Travel Awards 2012, 2013 & 2014, Best Holiday Airline at the Scottish Passenger Agents Association Awards 2014, Best Airline at the Group Leisure Awards 2012, 2013 & 2014 plus Best Travel Internet Booking System at the Northern Ireland Travel & Tourism Awards 2013 & 2014.
  5. It is a subsidiary of Dart Group PLC, an aviation services and distribution group.
  6. For further information visit www.jet2.com

About Jet2holidays

  1. Jet2holidays provides great value package holidays you can trust to more than 50 top sun destinations across the Mediterranean, Canary Islands and Europe.
  2. Jet2holidays wraps everything up in one great package. Customers have a choice of thousands of 2-5 star hotels, with Jet2.com flights, an industry leading 22kg baggage allowance and airport transfers included. All holidays can be secured with a low £60 per person deposit.
  3. Jet2holidays is ATOL protected and is a subsidiary of Dart Group PLC, an aviation services and distribution group.
  4. Jet2holidays has won a range of awards, with the most recent ones including: Best Package Tour Operator at the Northern Ireland Travel & Tourism Awards 2013 & 2014 and Best Mainstream Short Haul Tour Operator at the Scottish Passenger Agents Association Awards 2014.
  5. For further information visit www.jet2holidays.com

PR Archives: Latest, By Company, By Date